Q25 - Physician: Heart disease generally

[weiyichen1986]

Hi, I am wondering why A and C is wrong? Isnt the conlusion clearly stated that hormones influences the heart disease, then why do we have to assume it in D?

Thank you for your help.

[noah]

Another LSAT question about heart disease!

The conclusion of this argument is that testosterone promotes heart disease and estrogen inhibits it. (Isn't it strange to say "promotes heart disease"? I imagine a squad of cheerleaders.)

The premises? Men get heart disease earlier than women, and young men have a lot more testosterone than women, while women have a lot more estrogen than men until women hit menopause.

There's a lot of confusing stuff about timing in this argument, but it comes down to a simple issue: just because these factors correlate with heart disease doesn't mean there's causation. Maybe it's lifestyle, some other biological issue, etc.

(D) points out this flaw.

(A) is too strong - the argument doesn't say that hormones are the primary factor. Hormones could be secondary to genetics but it still hold true that hormones play the role the argument says.

(B) is similar to (A) - too strong!

(C) is about men with high testosterone levels - we're not interested in specific groups of men, but men in general.

(E) is irrelevant - the argument is about general trends. Of course there might be individual differences!

Tell me if that clears it up.

[wj097]

I got this wrong mainly because I am still shaky with languages that que correlation vs causation. All along I was thinking that "tend to" and "are likely" are all correlation language. Obviously it is not.. according to this q. What adds to the confusion is Geek's post on this issue, classifying these language as correlation. (correlation-to-conditional-implied-causation-t4568.html)
Appreciate if someone can make this clearer.

Thx

[noah]

I got this wrong mainly because I am still shaky with languages that que correlation vs causation. All along I was thinking that "tend to" and "are likely" are all correlation language. Obviously it is not.. according to this q. What adds to the confusion is Geek's post on this issue, classifying these language as correlation. (correlation-to-conditional-implied-causation-t4568.html)
Appreciate if someone can make this clearer.

Thx

"Tend to" and "are likely" means "probably" and can be applied to conditional relationships (making them not fully conditional). For example, "children can't play concertos" is children --> not play concerto, while "children are unlikely to play concertos" is children --> not likely to play concertos

You're at the place where just using simple word clues breaks down! This is a good place to be, as you want to not be automated in your reasoning.

I hope that clears it up.

[WaltGrace1983]

I found that the main thing to note about this conclusion is the very soft language. It is not truly conditional (or perhaps I should say normal) in the sense that Noah outlined above. However, because this language is soft, it leaves a lot open! This is especially important because the argument is asking what the author "presumes." If we have soft language, there is typically a lot less assumptions then if the language is a simple IF-THEN argument. What I mean is that the cue "tends to" makes it very possible that these two hormones are NOT the primary factors, they are NOT the only hormones that could affect heart disease, and they absolutely DO vary from person to person (as we can see from the word "generally").

This was how I eliminated A,B,C, and E. Also, notice how soft the answer choice is! It is NOT saying "Because X is correlated with Y, X causes Y." This is NOT what the argument is saying! The argument is saying that X "tends to" affect Y. Thereby, we get an answer choice that says how "X influences Y."

[WaltGrace1983]

After revisiting this one, I have a question. Isn't there another, yet much less important, flaw going on here? Obviously, we get this correlation/causation stuff and that is all good. However, it seems that even if we could prove causation from correlation (just humor me for a second ), the premises do not necessarily lead to the conclusion.

Why? Because the second premise, "women abruptly lose estrogen after menopause," doesn't actually tell us that much. We know that heart disease generally affects men at an earlier age than does women. However, we know nothing about the testosterone levels in men when they are relatively old, nor do we know anything about how much testosterone women have when they are relatively old, nor do we know anything about how much estrogen women lose when they are relatively old. It seems that there is a lot of missing information here.

Excuse me if this analysis is not worthwhile but I am just trying to think about the different ways this question could have gone.

[maryadkins]

You're right, Walt. Also, we don't know anything about how much estrogen men have when they're young. There's essentially a TON of missing information in this question. If someone was making this argument to you, you would have a laundry list of problems to throw back at them!